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[cikulisu]

hey guys. i'm not new to the game, though i haven't had any successes of note. ever. can someone explain (read: not tell me how to minmax, just explain the key mechanics)? what are my goals? how does recruiting work? who should i aim to recruit and when? how does secrecy and heat work? usually what happens: doing ok, getting legal money by doing art and stuff. have a few hackers and letter writers and whatever. bang, police raid. surely they'd love to talk this out!

police: LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOOOOORRRRRR (i'm sure you'll remember that song, courtesy of every youtube video ever circa 2007 heh

advice pls.

[Donuts]

http://lcs.wikidot.com/

All you need

[Darvi]

Eh, that's horrendously outdated. Still a good point to start though.

Note to self: get newest version and update that s...tuff.

[BoxOfAids]

Incoming wall of text:


Remember that skills are capped by their related attributes, which are increased by gaining juice. So a brand new recruit with an intelligence of 3 might end up with an intelligence of 7 after doing enough illegal stuff, whereas you might be able to find someone with an intelligence of 9 to start with who ends up closer to 17 after building up juice. The first guy would have a max computers and law skill (as well as any other INT-based skills) of 9, while the second guy would have a cap of 17 in these same skills (which is so high that some skills won't get there without quite a bit of work, hacking only brings computer skill to 15 iirc).

As for how to play, that's up to you. The standard way to play is to grab a few people at the start and train them up with gun skills, while using hackers to get money to supply your efforts. You can also free some kids from the clothes factory/sweatshop in the industrial district, get their juice up a bit, and use them to make clothes, which you can sell for a profit. There's really a lot of choices as for how to get money. From there you can do what you want; you can try to have tons of death squads going out as much as possible, you can train a small ninja squad with huge disguise and stealth skill that can sneak its way past anything, or you might just try an all-legal playthrough and never lift a finger against anyone. For early playthroughs where you're still learning, the best advice is to never keep all of your important people in one place. Personally, I have a whole safehouse for just my founder, one for hackers, one for tailor/first aid/utility person, then use the rest of my safehouses for my murdering/fighting squads (they go between them so as to not have massive heat all the time and not get raided).

You can always shoot up the police station a bunch to get it closed down and prevent raids. Sleepers at the police station (acquired from recruiting, kidnapping, or seducing) can also warn you of incoming raids. Remember that going on murdering sprees will raise the heat of your safehouse, so change them often if you keep killing people. You can buy apartments in each of the different parts of the city, and they have varying costs. You can also upgrade your industrial district safehouses to have business fronts which will make your heat rise more slowly, as well as have defenses in the event of a siege.

If you want to play the legal system side of the game, try getting some sleeper judges and lawyers by recruiting, kidnapping, or seducing. Sleeper judges have various effects like making the jury more lopsided in your favor, and always granting leniency when found guilty. Sleeper lawyers just give you a free lawyer for when someone goes to court, with better stats than taking a state-appointed lawyer. If you have sleepers in the legal system and you're at risk of some important liberals dying, just have them surrender and take your chances in court. Better to give them a chance to live in court than have them fighting police officers while there's no police brutality laws.

The main goal is to sway the issues. There are elections every November 1st in even years only, so changing public opinion shortly before then can do wonders for the election results. Just don't wait too long, or you won't be able to get many issues swayed. The best way to change the public's stance is to raid related sites and just kill people. For example, if people don't want liberal judges, go raid the courthouses to raise awareness. If people don't care about sweatshops, raid the businesses in the industrial district. Just keep in mind that harming innocents during raids (by accident) can have the reverse effect, you alienate the masses and they won't see it your way. There are also issues that are based on public opinion at the time, I think they can be in march and one other month, but if you happen to have opinion in your favor if/when these come up, the issues can instantly change to be more liberal. Of course, if Congress and the Supreme Court are all conservative, these changes will likely be quickly reversed.

Keep in mind that as gun laws get more liberal, it becomes harder to acquire the better weapons. At arch-conservative gun control laws, you can buy AK47s no problem. You might want to stock up on them, too, because as soon as gun control moves 1 notch up, you lose access to the AKs. The more liberal it gets, the worse the guns are in the gun shop, you lose the good/expensive options. Of course, there are plenty of ways to get your hands on better guns, and I'll let you explore for that.

Good luck!



tl;dr - Don't keep all of your non-expendable people in one place, do tons of raids before even-year novembers, cheese the legal system, shoot up lots of cops to stop raids, sleepers are your friends

[Darvi]

Who cares about AK47s when you can get swords that can literally cleave tanks in half.

Acclaimer: Swords don't actually do that until you have a high Strength stat and Sword skill. The latter of which you probably won't get unless you singlehandedly raid something every day or something.

[The Darkling Wolf]

Pretty sure swords can't cut tanks in half any more.

[Darvi]

Not?

Welp.

Can you turn them liberal with your guitars then?

[Jboy2000000]

Not?

Welp.

Can you turn them liberal with your guitars then?

Nope, thats been removed for a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG time.

[KA101]

I'm fond of the stealthy approach: train people for Disguise & Stealth at the Sweatshop (where Naked is Disguise-compatible) and you can find Cloth and Workers to make disguises.  The Work Clothes allow raiding the factories, Black Robe is good for the Courthouse (as well as giving a Stealth bonus, so helps training Stealth) and the Lab Coat lets you in the University labs & the nuke plant.

You'll need some Security to do any of this properly.  Fortunately, once you have someone with it (several A answers during character creation give a point of Security, or find someone who can help), one can grind it up reasonably quickly by going to apartment complexes & picking the doors.  Move to wealthier neighborhoods once you're routinely opening each door, and by the time you're beating the Downtown apartment, you should have little to no problems with doors.

Sweatshop: immigrant rights, worker rights, maybe pollution(?); Cloth enables cost-effective disguise-making and sells OK itself
Factory: worker rights, pollution; chemicals don't sell well but smashing the machinery boosts Juice reasonably well
Courthouse: Liberal Judges, some other issues too; selling loot works well
Labs: Animal testing/genemod food, respectively; freeing caged creatures gives Juice rapidly, loot sells well

Once your Disguise & Stealth are in good shape, you should be able to afford a pickup truck or New Beetle.  The pickup gives +1 to Driving so it may be worth the extra $2000.  (Four unloaded M16s will pay for the difference, and M4s are better anyway.)  Then you can grab a Black Robe and stealth through the Army base until you find army-armor; equip to disguise, and you'll not need to buy assault rifles ever again.

[sebcool]

I would recommend starting with a stealth game. Basically, answer all A questions at the start except for question 5 and 9 (where you should pick E to get a strength and sword boost and a few maps of the downtown buildings). Then go to the commercial district and the Oubliette and buy a katana (or sword, but who buys those).

You can then try your luck at the park in the university district and slash a few conservatives for a nice juice boost (important for recruiting and boosts your stats). If your feeling lucky, try raiding a factory and sneak around to train your stealth skill. Don't worry if you get caught or killed, just restart and try again.

You can also try robbing a bank, just go to the teller (at the south end of the bank) talk to her and select rob the bank. You then get an option to take 'em all hostage (DON'T DO THAT!) or quietly slip her a note (giving you 5000 risk free dollars), just don't try that when it's at high security (purple text) or you will get your ass handed to you.

You can then use that cash to train your persuasion (select activate liberals (A) select learn in the university district and select public policy). You can then go to the juice bar in the university district and find either an athlete for dancer (high strength and agility, perfect for a stealth build) and strike up a conversation about politics, if you're lucky they will be persuaded by your liberal anecdotes and will meet you at the end of the day. If your having trouble finding anybody just press S on the keyboard and you will instantly get an encounter.

At the meeting you can then try and persuade them to join your cause. If you still have money left use the A option for better odds at persuading them, otherwise, press B. If you're lucky they will be swayed by your amazing skills and meet you the next day. Continue this until you can ask them to join the liberal cause (C) and then the FUN starts.

You will then have to train them in the arts of the shinobi (Go to activate liberals, select you leader, go to Teach other liberals and select Infiltration), and bushido (select Urban Warfare). Steal a few vans (Activity S then search for a van) and sell them at the used car store, to get some cheap cash if you run dry.

After a month or so you will have some highly trained ninjas at your disposal, put them to good use and attack a few sites like cosmetics or a factory, just wait for a lone conservative to pass by and impale him with extreme prejudice! (F) Then you run the FUCK away, rinse and repeat.

With this build you will have a good baseline for a relatively easy starting game and the ability to go wherever the fuck you want. Fell free to experiment with assault squads or hackers, or try your luck with robbing the bank for real.

Just have your best ninja (probably your leader) train his computer skills and security to about 8. Then just go through the locked door at the back, find the vault door, wait for a Bank Manager to pass by (you will need him to breach the vault) and kidnap him (K). Then you just try cracking the vault and if your lucky you will open the vault and 140000$ will be piled neatly in front of you. Stuff the money in your bag, sneak past the SWAT teams as they come in, empty the vault further, and sneak out. Just remember to dispose of the manager before you go (Release hostage, and then attack him). Now you have all the money you need to do whatever you want, just be careful since if you get raided you will lose all the money you stole from the bank, but you can always try again.

Hope it helps 

Edit: And as for secrecy and heat. Just try to have as much secrecy as possible (a flag always helps) and as little heat as possible (by not doing things like mass murder or hacking) try to check the wiki, it's still okay despite being outdated.

[KA101]

Hmm.  If I was doing a combat game, I'd want points in Dodge.  Uni trains that via Gymnastics class; one can raise Persuasion reasonably well by just finding Hippies, Prostitutes, or Mutants (if in the Nightmare) and talking about the issues.  Every time your meeting goes well, that's Persuasion XP.  Probably slower than the Uni, but it's not as though one's short on time at the beginning.

High Stealth works great; once you have a point, it levels up in site actions reasonably well.  I'd still suggest training Disguise alongside it & dressing for Disguise--if the unthinkable happens and they see through your Stealth, Disguise can still blend you in and save Alarm problems.

Secrecy is a function of where you are (richer neighborhood=higher secrecy Apartment), what's there (Business Fronts and Flags are extremely worth the money) and how many people you have there (more than 4-5 and apartments start breaking down; abandoned buildings can handle 10 or so without too many problems, IIRC).

One thing I just remembered: Every November (specifically, the month change from October to November) the population directly votes on laws; simple majority passes them.  October is a great month to break things loose; after the elections, there won't be anything important until end of Jan/Feb (Supreme Court action, IIRC) of the next year, so you could even run people through the legal system afterward.

Hoping all this helps.